by Bev Jafek
Then they sat and passed the wine bottle between them as the late afternoon turned to sunset. The sounds of animal life around them grew louder, and this they relished. Streaks of pink and orange cirrus clouds and a sliver of moon appeared in the sky. “To me, it’s even beautiful like this,” Ruth said. “We’re way out, adrift in nature. I’ve always loved that feeling, no matter how bleak. I could never have studied Patagonia for so many years if I didn’t feel it.”
“But I feel like this is the death of Spain, and we’re saying goodbye.”
“It’s true in a way. One form of life is ending here and another will begin.” Ruth thought. The Spain of the future might be greener and less arid, with humans living in houses that can float on water. Still, the weather everywhere will be pure chaos, and everyone will risk drought along with floods and mudslides. It won’t really be safe anywhere, and money will no longer insulate people as it once did. The rich will die along with the poor, though the rich will be last to understand their folly. Damn, I can’t say any of this to her.
And as suddenly and unexpectedly as any part of the wilds, she appeared out of nowhere and came up to them, smiling—a woman at least in her eighties, perhaps older. She was short and squat with wild, brilliantly white hair. Her face was a mass of tanned and weathered wrinkles, though her features were very regular and showed evidence of early beauty. Her smile was broad and delighted, displaying just a few powerful, prominent teeth in her upper and lower gums. Her dress was dark brown, diffuse and shapeless, with an apron that was speckled and worn. Curiously, on her feet was a pair of tennis shoes.
“Oh . . . hello,” Sylvie began in confusion. “We didn’t know . . .”
“We thought the village was deserted. We had no idea you were living here. My name is Ruth Land,” Ruth said and offered her hand.
Sylvie did the same with a smile. “I am Sylvie Dumarais.”
The old woman smiled in delight as she took both of their hands in hers, held them long, and squeezed them. Her face, swathed in the wrinkles of her vast smile was all the lovelier, and the few teeth of her upper and lower gums all the more powerful and square. Sylvie thought, I didn’t know I was longing for you but I was, and I don’t know quite what you are. The old woman gestured for them to follow her. Ruth and Sylvie looked at one another in surprise and then did so, smiling.
They all walked along the decaying main thoroughfare of the town at the slow, uneven gait of the old woman, whose joints were far from flexible. The village, radiant in the sunset, seemed completely new to them; it was now—uniquely and unexpectedly—a town of one inhabitant. “She can’t speak?” Sylvie asked.
“She is clearly mute,” Ruth said. “Let’s not yet assume that she can’t hear, however.” They continued to scrutinize the ruined village, now the color and texture of old nuts, for signs of other people, but found no one. At the end of the thoroughfare, the old woman gestured for them to follow her onto a slender dirt path, which wound around a hill until they could see a hut above. The sky behind it was crimson bordered in black.
“What are we getting ourselves into?” Sylvie whispered.
“I don’t sense any danger here. I’d watch an old man very carefully, but there’s no safer bet than an old woman. Relax and enjoy a completely unexpected experience that will never be repeated in your lifetime,” Ruth said with a smile and thought, besides, I’m carrying a wine bottle in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.
As they approached the woman’s home, they saw a structure completely unlike the others. It was a primitive hut made of interwoven straw and clay mud with perhaps a skeletal wood frame, as might be found in Africa or in rural Europe of the middle ages. The woman again beckoned them in.
Reflecting the soft light of an old lantern, the interior was evidence of a life so ancient as to be unrecognizable. All of her furnishings seemed to be self-made with barely hewn boughs and sticks from a forest. Her shelves were comprised of six wooden posts with four sticks connecting them, sufficient to hold the few boxes and jars she stored there. All were made from boughs or trunks of trees, now gray with age and cooking smoke. Only one jar was contemporary, like the woman’s tennis shoes. She gestured toward three chairs that were also self-made, with slender poles originally from trees and heavy matted ropes for seats. Astonished, Ruth and Sylvie sat.
Ruth asked, “Are you alone here? There is no one else living in the village?” The old woman nodded and smiled, and they realized that she was merely mute and could hear and understand language. Then she smiled even more deeply, with cascading wrinkles of pleasure, and opened both hands in a gesture to both of them.
“And now we are three,” Sylvie said, creating words for her. The old woman nodded her head and there, with the soft cinnabar light of sunset gently touching the room, all three women felt delight in the rare, hidden loveliness of the world. They could smell her dinner cooking on a stove comprised of large tin cans on top of a small invisible central stove. Fire was coming from within, and a primitive two-handled cauldron was bubbling.
Though words seemed unnecessary, Ruth said, “Thank you. We will just eat a bit with you since we are not that hungry. But, you must let me drive to the coast and replenish your groceries. The coast is only a few miles. I insist.” The old woman nodded in a bow, then handed them their plates, which were bent and made of thin metal like a miner’s gear. She ladled into them a kind of brown stew with vegetables—onions, potatoes, and others they could not identify. Her eating implements were bent and metallic also, possibly self-made.
As Ruth and Sylvie tasted the stew, they noticed a surprisingly sweet taste that also reflected the presence of nuts. They had never tasted anything like it and found it very substantial and filling. Up to then, they had said little, since speech seemed impolite when the old woman could not join in. But now, they praised the uniqueness and tastiness of the stew. The old woman gestured with an open hand to Sylvie and then to Ruth. “You made it for us,” Ruth said, again translating. The old woman placed her hand over her heart and nodded as they ate and smiled. This is intimacy and trust, Sylvie thought, possibly the first I’ve felt with anyone in Spain, even in Europe, besides Ruth. Ruth thought, she must have seen us from a distance and begun the meal then. What an amazing creature. She is utterly one-of-a-kind.
The old woman now poured a liquid from a bottle into three clay cups. As they drank, Ruth and Sylvie felt a fierce alcoholic kick from the homemade beverage. Bootleg, of course, Ruth thought. “Strong and good,” she said. Weird as hell, Sylvie thought, but I’m much safer here than in the Spanish cities. I wonder what she ferments it from, Ruth thought. It could be anything growing around here.
The old woman smiled her endlessly deeper and more resonant smile. She gestured toward the two of them with open hands and then placed them over her heart. “We are so happy to be with you, too,” Sylvie said.
“Yes,” Ruth added, “and to think we could have driven past without finding you.” The old woman closed her eyes in pleasure and nodded, her hands still over her heart. Ruth saw the inevitable hungry look come over Sylvie’s face, but it was tempered with a tenderness she had not seen before. How could Sylvie fail to paint this woman, perhaps the most amazing of them all? Ruth thought. We could be in the Middle Ages, even further back.
How could I have left Spain without finding you? Sylvie thought. You are everything hidden, secret, unexpected, hard-won and then found, in one luminous moment, to be the foundation of all that is good. I love you dearly, like a daughter. I have never seen a smile like yours. You are multitudes of smiles, your wrinkled but wonderful skin holding them all like your rich cauldron. Are you smiling somehow more deeply or is your face so weathered and touched by nature that you show all the smiles of a lifetime? One painting must solely be your marvelous face with the endlessness of your smile.
Another painting must show you over your stove. I will make the stove larger with vague lines in the dark but splashes of fiery light, something more like a primitiv
e forge. You are utterly unique, the last of your kind, the original life-giver, a creator. I feel that strongly in you: you are one who gives life more than taking it, a forger-artisan of the world. What sort of life have you led out here alone? You are unafraid, self-sustaining, at ease. Where does that capacity come from? It is surely not modern—anything but modern! No, you are timeless. There is so much I can learn from you! What are the words for you? I will have to title you “The Old Woman of Spain,” and yet even with that, with words, we will never know the how and why of you.
The woman began to refill their glasses, but Ruth raised her wine bottle. “Please let me contribute. If you like it, I have a case with me and would love to give it to you.” The old woman took the bottle and poured for three. Then she gestured outside. “Yes, the wine with the sunset would be lovely,” Sylvie said. The three women sat on the two steps of a porch in front of the hut and together looked down at the desert below the hill. In the distance was the highway, with vehicles still moving quickly to the coast, another time dimension flying away from them, the sky now twilight, and still the desert wind playing with anything that could move. The old woman held her wine in one hand and took Sylvie’s hand in the other. Sylvie took Ruth’s hand and there they sat, watching the world go dim but no less lively for that, and there seemed to be so much of significance that words were unnecessary.
We are friends, wonderful and impossible friends, Ruth thought. How often does that happen in this life?
When it was nearly dark, the old woman placed one hand over the other to indicate that she intended to sleep. Of course, Ruth thought, she rises in the dawn and sleeps in the dark, like a woman of the Neolithic. “We’ll be just outside in sleeping bags,” Ruth said, “and we’ll leave tomorrow after I drive to the coast and get groceries for you.” The old woman showed them an outside water pump and a metal cup as well as a pond behind the hut that would serve, however rustically, for their hygiene and other needs. When Ruth and Sylvie lay together in their sleeping bags, looking up at the clear, black sky filled with stars and the low, persistent sigh of a desert wind, Sylvie said, “I feel very full, of what I’m not sure.”
“Intimacy, friendship, the unexpected,” Ruth offered.
“Spain, too.”
“It looks different now, doesn’t it?”
“Entirely. We’ve found something it hides, maybe its past or its foundation or even another dimension. I’m not sure which,” Sylvie said, and they slept.
In the morning, they decided that Ruth would drive to the coast alone and Sylvie would take her charcoal and paper pad and stay behind with the old woman. When Ruth returned, she was astonished to find them together, surrounded by several dozen drawings, some by Sylvie and others in a very different style. They greeted Ruth with jubilant laughter.
“She’s an artist!” Sylvie said exultantly, gesturing toward several of the drawings. “These portraits are her two daughters, and more drawings show her grandchildren. Some may be great-grandchildren.” Ruth looked at them avidly. “The daughters and their children appeared to be living in a sizeable house, and their clothing and surroundings looked contemporary, though they shared some of the old woman’s features. One sketch displayed a very beautiful girl with long, dark hair who probably resembled the old woman when she was young, Ruth thought.
“I’m not exactly sure how I got all this information, but between drawing, pointing, questioning and nodding, I’ve discovered that they’re all living and working on the coast or in Northern Spain. The rest of the village was abandoned for jobs elsewhere, too, just as you said.” She stopped to smile at the recollection of the afternoon. She and the old woman were clearly overjoyed to have found their common passion. “I’ve shown her the animals of Doñana and some sketches of the women I’ll be painting. Her daughter on the coast comes once a week with groceries and other supplies, and her whole family has tried to convince her to move away or live with them, but she wants to stay here, drawing and painting. She even wants to die here. She finds it beautiful in its bleakness, as you said you did. She’s another one who loves to be adrift in nature.”
Sylvie stopped and smiled again at her memory of the afternoon they had spent together. “I’ve been flabbergasted. It’s as though we’ve been talking while sketching all afternoon. We’ve been so happy here.” Sylvie reached out and held the old woman’s hand. Again, the old woman smiled her endlessly deep and resonant smile and placed Sylvie’s hand over her heart.
Later, as the three women drank coffee together, Ruth said to the old woman, “I am truly killing joy, but I think it is time for us to leave. We have found both happiness and enlightenment with you. Spain will not be the same for us.”
“I didn’t know I was looking for you, but I was,” Sylvie said with a smile. The old woman only smiled more deeply and held their hands to her heart. Sylvie thought, she completely accepts our departure, takes the absence with the presence. She is self-sufficient.
The old woman pointed to her head and then her heart. “We’ll always remember you, too,” Ruth said. “If we’re ever in southern Spain again, we’ll find you.” The old woman pointed to her hut and then her heart. Ruth thought, she is saying “I’ll always be here, in the world I love.” Ah, but she is far too precious for the word, always, to apply.
As they drove away and onto the coastal highway, they both sensed, in different terms, that they were rejoining the twenty-first century. “She’s the one I’ll miss,” Sylvie said.
“I can understand that.”
“I’m so glad we stopped.”
“Sometimes, your most instinctive feeling is the best to follow. I have come to cherish the experiences that come from that source.”
Cherishing . . . Sylvie considered. How rarely I cherish anything but art. Do I even cherish Ruth?
When they reached the first hill with an elevated view of the coastline, they parked and got out of the jeep. Below, they saw an endlessly repeating conglomerate of towering coastal hotels and entertainment palaces, skyscrapers as high as any in Europe, stretching all the way out to the Mediterranean, which flashed and winked its ancient, oceanic eye. “Well, hello ugliness of modernity,” Sylvie said, “except for the Mediterranean, which almost looks in on the joke. I don’t think I even want to swim on this coastline. Can we swim in Barcelona?”
“Sure, it’s on the Mediterranean, too,” Ruth said softly. She, too, felt dispirited. “I last saw this as a girl, and it was a bunch of small fishing villages. The coast is a big economic success, I’m sure, but it’s horrifying, too, when you remember . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Then let’s just get the Costa del Sol over with and drive straight through.”
They alternated driving and sleeping and arrived in Barcelona after nightfall. When they presented themselves at Monserrat’s home, she was not there, but they were expected and shown to their rooms. They showered, picked Ruth’s room as the one they would share, and made love with great abandon. Ruth felt some anger in Sylvie’s passion but decided, again, that it was impossible not to enjoy the passion of a beautiful, brilliant woman. They did not stop until they both fell asleep with their bodies intertwined. Ah, the sexy life of an artist, though I’m just along for the ride, was Ruth’s last thought. I’m still going to fuck her to death here, was Sylvie’s last thought.
When they awoke late the next morning, they found themselves in a house unlike any they had ever seen before. On the walls of their room as well as the hallway outside, they found many small glowing sculptures of oceanic spirals and seashells alternating with natural iconic forms like flowers, lightning, clouds, waves and fractals, no two of which were alike. All were attached to or a part of the walls and ceilings and made of glazed ceramic in many different colors and geometric patterns. As they walked into other rooms of the house, they found the walls and ceilings similarly covered with more gleaming iconic and fractal ceramic shapes, some hanging from spirals like a woman’s earrings. All were equally varied, no two alike.
Similar patterns in larger sculptures hung down luxuriously like great globes of fruit from the tops and sides of the rooms, framing the space, as though the people inside were a perpetually ongoing work of art and nature was both the artist and the foundation. In some rooms, the varying shapes became quasi-human, child or Cupid-like forms living within spirals and fractals, humans and nature beginning to merge.
It is the decor of a mermaid rising from the sea with the ocean’s creatures still clinging to her flesh, as though they would not give her up, Sylvie thought. Everything is movement, oceanic, female, vulvar, ecstatic.
It is a space of infinite aesthetic and psychological complexity as well as size, Ruth thought. We are in a house of enchantment with untold powers. At last their eyes met and they looked in astonishment at one another, having suddenly turned into strangers. Then they both burst out laughing.
“I almost asked, ‘what on earth was that?’” Sylvie said. “But you hush. I don’t want to know what it was.”
Ruth was silent, thinking it feels as though we’ve been away from each other and are now becoming reacquainted. Is this house a topologist that can turn time and space inside out? Physicists claim that the universe can do this. Who on earth is Monserrat and what sort of creator is she? Then a woman came up to them and told them that Monserrat was waiting for them with lunch in the gazebo. They followed, continuing to look at the walls and ceilings, marveling as they walked.
AT FIRST, THEY were formal with one another:
“Ruth Land.”
“Sylviane Dumarais.”
“Monserrat Mistral.”
“Alex Milczek.”
They shook hands spontaneously, unlike women. Ruth wondered at the extra formality of Sylvie’s introduction of herself, since she was Sylvie to anyone else, intuiting that she was uncomfortable and possibly hostile. Monserrat had returned in the early morning from a trip to her house by the ocean in Cadaqués, and the four women were having lunch in the largest gazebo Ruth had ever seen. Monserrat’s house seemed to be endless.